


Woven

by apparitionism



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little Bering & Wells snag-and-bag, written well before S4, which basically made it canon-incompatible. Anyway, even if S4 and S5 had not occurred, our intrepid duo might still have had an issue or two to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Woven

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't got Myka quite right in this, I know. There's something a little too season-2 about her. But I'm hoping the ending makes it worthwhile.

Myka has doubts.

She shouldn’t; she knows she shouldn’t. Every time Helena’s had an opportunity to prove herself, she’s done so. Every single time she’s had to make a choice between the wrong thing—even the self-indulgent thing—and the right thing, she’s chosen the right thing. And every time Helena’s had the chance to leave, she’s stayed.

And yet somehow Myka doesn’t quite believe it. It isn’t that she doesn’t believe Helena loves her. She believes that. Mostly. Insofar as she can believe that anyone loves her, and “mostly” is about as close as she can get, a lot of the time. So it isn’t that. Not exactly.

It has something to do with the “H.G. Wells” thing, she thinks. She’s dealt with that on some level by trying to forget that it’s the case, by holding in her head some version of the idea that the woman who shares her life and her bed isn’t actually _that_ person at all. And when she’s working the rationalization hard, she tells herself it’s the truth: _that_ person lived over a hundred years ago. _This_ person understands how to use an iPad. Those two people can’t be the same; ergo, _this_ person is not H.G. Wells. Because if this person _were_ H.G. Wells, there’s no way she would be content to stay with Myka. She might love her, for however long that lasted. But she wouldn’t stay.

And that’s the fundamental problem, the nut of all the doubts: no matter how relentlessly she rationalizes, she still thinks Helena won’t stay. Helena’s going to need something else, something _more_ , than whatever it is Myka can give her, which isn’t going to be enough. Even if she’s just Helena Wells (“just” Helena Wells?), she’s bigger and grander than Myka is, bigger and grander than a Warehouse agent—though maybe not bigger and grander than the Warehouse itself; maybe that’s the only thing of a scale that can match her. It’s certainly the only thing Myka can think of. Although even that, Myka thinks, probably just speaks to her own lack of imagination.

She can’t talk about any of this with Helena, of course. Helena still has plenty of troubles and uncertainties of her own, some of which she’s been gracious enough to share with Myka—and Myka does think of it as Helena being quite literally gracious, bestowing on Myka a kind of grace that she doesn’t bother to grant anyone else. It does make Myka feel that she’s been given pride of place. She _loves_ that; all her life she’s wanted to be made special in just this way.

But when they’re sent out on a not particularly difficult retrieval mission, something happens that brings all of Myka’s doubts to the fore: Helena meets someone who excites her interest. They are looking for a piece of a tapestry that’s making people behave in whatever bizarre way, and in the course of their investigation, they talk to an art historian. She conducts forensic studies of all kinds of artwork, tracing histories and evolutions, and Helena clearly finds this, and her, fascinating. Myka can see something behind Helena’s professional mask ignite as Helena keeps coming up with more questions, drawing out the interview as long as possible, _getting_ something from this woman that Myka knows she’s never gotten from Myka herself.

Later, in their hotel room, Myka almost can’t bring herself to touch Helena. She lets Helena touch her, though, and she figures that the fire she feels in those hands isn’t even for her tonight. If it isn’t exactly for that other woman, still it’s for that extra something Helena’s found today.

Give Helena credit: she knows something’s different, something’s wrong. “Myka,” she says in the dark, “talk to me.”

But Myka can’t say anything. She shakes her head against Helena’s bare shoulder and whispers, “Not tonight.” And not ever, she mourns. She knows, now, that she has always already been mourning the end of this. Sooner, later—it makes no real difference. Myka tries as hard as she can to keep her tears at bay until Helena falls asleep.

In the end, they find the bit of tapestry. Artie tells them via the Farnsworth that it’s part of the tapestry Penelope wove and rewove while she waited for Odysseus—which makes it one of the oldest artifacts that Myka’s ever dealt with. This unsettles her. She busies herself with the police as they take into custody the person who “liberated” it from the museum; he’d apparently been intending to sell it to an Arab oil magnate with a private museum, but instead ended up hiding out in his mother’s house. Myka wonders, not for the first time, why so many criminals are so dumb. Helena’s off in a corner having one of her customary disputes with Artie about something or other as they discuss the artifact’s function. Myka doesn’t bother to listen.

The police are gone by the time Myka sees Helena close the Farnsworth. Decisively. Her expression is serious. “Is everything okay?” Myka asks. “Are we ready to bag this thing and go home?”

“Everything is fine,” Helena says, but now her face is inscrutable. She strides over to the case in which the tapestry was transported and opens it decisively, almost violently. Her hand darts toward the artifact.

“Wait,” Myka says, “you forgot your gloves!”

Helena looks directly at her. “No,” she says, “in fact, I did not.” She holds the fabric gently in one hand and runs long fingers over it.

Myka pulls her own gloves onto her hands and snatches the thing from Helena. “What are you doing?” she demands.

“I wished to demonstrate it,” Helena says with a shrug.

“Demonstrate what?”

“Its effect.” Now Helena gives Myka a warm smile. She places her arms around Myka’s neck—it’s a bit of a reach; the heels on Helena’s boots today are not particularly high.

“Why? What’s its effect?” Myka is thoroughly confused. Helena doesn’t do this in public. She’s suggestive, in that way she can’t help but be, but usually only very subtly.

“Do you think I didn’t understand, last night? Do you really think I understand so little about you?”

“What’s its effect?” Myka demands. Now she’s scared.

Instead of answering, Helena says, “You know _The Odyssey_. What did Penelope want?”

“Is this a riddle? I don’t know. What did Penelope want?”

“She wanted her husband, her _lover_ , Odysseus, to come home.” Helena is still smiling.

“Right.” Myka is trying to feign nonchalance, trying not to thrill to the way Helena says the word _lover_. “So?”

“So, Myka, that is its effect.” Now Helena kisses her, and now, now Myka is beginning to understand. “The artifact leads its bearer home.”

END


End file.
